Did He Do the Right Thing? : Chairman’s Role in Bhopal Disaster Remains Ambiguous
Union Carbide’s settlement in India of the mammoth lawsuit stemming from the Bhopal chemical plant disaster spells the end of years of turmoil for Warren M. Anderson, the company’s former chairman, who until Tuesday was technically a fugitive from Indian justice.
The settlement wipes out criminal homicide charges as well as civil lawsuits against the 67-year-old. Last November a magistrate in Bhopal issued an arrest warrant for Anderson and renewed demands that he be brought to India to appear before the court. Earlier this month, the court declared that Anderson was a fugitive from justice.
In the years since the Dec. 3, 1984, tragedy, in which fumes from a pesticide plant killed 3,330 people in the city in central India, Anderson had been vilified in India and elsewhere. He was portrayed as the uncaring head of an American company that operated an unsafe plant in a Third World country and exposed thousands of people to mortal danger.
His immediate expressions of sympathy after the disaster and a bold trip to Bhopal within days failed to quell the criticism. On arriving in Bhopal, he was briefly placed under arrest, then released and advised to leave the country. Anderson and Carbide later maintained they had evidence that the disaster was not caused by negligence but by sabotage by a disgruntled employee.
In 1986, at age 65, Anderson retired. It was the normal retirement age and his leaving was not linked to the Bhopal disaster. But at the time of his retirement, he was criticized for his handling of the incident, as well as for having been slow to reorganize the chemicals giant in the face of adverse market conditions and for having left the company exposed to a hostile takeover attempt in 1986 by GAF Corp.’s Samuel J. Heyman. Union Carbide eventually fended off the attempt.
Anderson these days keeps a low profile and no longer serves on Union Carbide’s board. He could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. Press spokesmen at Union Carbide and the company’s lawyers refused to pass along a request for an interview or to give out his unlisted home telephone number in Greenwich, Conn.
Sense of Loss
The company also refused to make available anyone who knows Anderson and who could comment on how the Bhopal disaster and its aftermath affected him.
In a 1985 newspaper profile, Anderson spoke about suddenly being held accountable for one of this century’s worst industrial disasters. “It must be like when someone loses a son or a daughter,” he said. “You wake up in the morning thinking, can it possibly have occurred? And then you know it has, and you know it’s something you’re going to have to struggle with for a long time.”
In the months following the disaster, the chairman conceded that the company might share part of the blame. He also admitted that the plant had not complied with company operating standards and had used procedures that would not be permitted in the United States. Although he also blamed Indian authorities for permitting people to live so close to the pesticides plant, he emphasized Union Carbide’s responsibility to compensate victims.
But Anderson later was accused of awkwardly reversing his public stand as the amount of potential legal liability became apparent and as the company became embroiled in an increasingly bitter legal battle first in American courts and then in India, after a U.S. judge ruled in 1986 that Indian courts had jurisdiction.
The company soon came to disclaim responsibility for the disaster after its investigators were said to have turned up evidence that a disgruntled employee had deliberately allowed water to run into a chemical storage tank, touching off the deadly chemical reaction.
Indian authorities, however, have disputed the sabotage theory. And Union Carbide has never publicly revealed key details of its investigation, including the identity of the former employee it believes carried out the sabotage.
Criminal charges were filed in 1987 in India against Anderson, Union Carbide, a Hong Kong-based subsidiary, and eight officers of the company’s Indian subsidiary. Throughout 1988, summonses were issued for Anderson and others, culminating in the arrest warrant in November. Company officials, however, maintained throughout that the Indian courts had no jurisdiction over company’s officials outside of India.
Anderson joined Union Carbide in 1945 as a sales representative and gradually worked his way to the top. He was succeeded as chairman in 1986 by Robert D. Kennedy, who also became president and chief executive. Kennedy moved quickly to streamline the company and continued to maintain its hard line stand that it was not responsible for the disaster.
